Today we began the heavy lifting of the first unit of significance: we’re learning the difference between analyzing and summarizing in order to begin analyzing short stories. We looked at Li-young  Lee’s “The GIft” in order to determine the difference. The first step was to determine how much of the summary was not from the poem, highlighting those portions in the summary yellow. By the middle of class, it was clear to students that none of the summary should be highlighted yellow as all of the material in the summary comes directly or indirectly from the text.

Next students looked at analysis of the poem:

The poem “The Gift” tells the story of a young boy whose father is removing a splinter from his hand. It is a poem about the fact that everyday events like pulling a splinter out can be in fact gifts, and the poem accomplishes this by highlighting apparent opposites. To begin with, the act of pulling a splinter out of the hand is inherently violent, but the poem creates a tenderness about it. The speaker tells us that instead of focusing on the painful act of pulling the splinter out, he “watched his [father’s] lovely face” and listened as his father “recited a story in a low voice.” His father’s face and voice were calming, and this undoubtedly helped turn the situation into a calm memory later in life. In fact, instead of being a violent act, this is only a tender moment.

Students, working in groups, were to highlight light blue anything that’s an inference and dark red anything that comes directly from the text.

The upshot was the understanding that most if not all of the content for summary comes from the text itself whereas most of the content in analysis comes from the writer’s head — opinion and inference backed from the text.

The final step was to analyze the paragraph for Schaffer completeness. Students determined the following:

• This sentence feels like a topic sentence (it makes a claim) but is in the wrong location:
  It is a poem about the fact that everyday events like pulling a splinter out can be in fact gifts, and the poem accomplishes this by highlighting apparent opposites.
• The third sentence feels like it might be a CD because it’s got a transition element but it’s an opinion, which is not the role of CDs but rather CMs or even TSs.
  To begin with, the act of pulling a splinter out of the hand is inherently violent, but the poem creates a tenderness about it.
• The fourth sentence has a quote, which means it comes from the writer’s source (in this case, the poem) and not his/her head. This means it feels like a CD but is in the position of a CM otherwise.
  The speaker tells us that instead of focusing on the painful act of pulling the splinter out, he “watched his [father’s] lovely face” and listened as his father “recited a story in a low voice.”

Homework

• English I Honors: complete work as needed.